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North Mason protests salary inequity in McCleary bill

Kitsap
Published 10:45 a.m. PT Dec. 15, 2017

From left, North Mason School District board members Leanna Krotzer, Laura Boad and John Campbell, with Superintendent Dana Rosenbach, discuss the inequity presented in HB 2242, at a board study session, Dec. 7, in Belfair. North Mason teachers, administrators and board members plan to put pressure on legislators to amend portions of the new school funding law that negatively impact North Mason.(Photo: Arla Shephard Bull / Mason County Life)

North Mason teachers and administrators plan to lobby next month for changes to the state’s new laws on school funding and teacher pay.

Under House Bill 2242, adopted last year, legislators eliminated the state salary schedule for teachers after this school year and asked districts to create their own salary schedules based on a statewide average allocation, $64,000 per teacher, adjusted for regionalization and inflation.

School districts within 15 miles of a major metropolitan area are able to claim a percentage of regionalization dollars: 6 percent, 12 percent or 18 percent, depending on the district.

North Mason School District doesn’t qualify for any regionalization dollars, but neighboring districts in Pierce and Kitsap do. Teachers, administrators and classified staff in all Kitsap school districts will get paid 18 percent more than they will in Mason, under the new law.

North Mason is the only district in the state that neighbors a district that qualifies for an 18 percent salary bump but does not qualify for any regionalization dollars on its own.

“We are the only one with a 0 next to an 18, even though part of Kitsap County is in our district,” Superintendent Dana Rosenbach told school board members at a study session Thursday, Dec. 7. “We are continuing to force that issue.”

Regionalization dollars are meant to make up for higher housing costs in more affluent districts, but those formulas don’t account for transportation costs in rural districts, Rosenbach said.

The formula also doesn’t accurately depict the difference in housing costs between North Mason and Kitsap — Rosenbach noted that the price for a single-family house in Kitsap County is about 7 percent higher than in Mason County, according to the Washington Association of Realtors.

“It doesn’t atone for that … there is a lot there that doesn’t make sense,” she said.

While the law, known as the McCleary solution, was meant to address funding issues, not issues of equity, legislators unintentionally codified inequities between rural and urban school districts, Rosenbach added.

“The application of the law … says your ZIP code says that your kids are more important than our ZIP code says our kids are,” she said. “Everybody knows it’s an inequitable solution.”

Under the state’s own law, school districts within 15 miles of other districts that qualify for regionalization dollars should be able to qualify for regionalization dollars as well, so North Mason will be pressing the Legislature to follow its own rules, Rosenbach continued.

“We will be more listened to if we take a unified voice of union leadership and district leadership instead of one or the other,” she said. “They are not used to seeing administrators and teachers working together. If we do that, we will be heard.”

Initially, school districts had until the 2019-2020 school year to create their salary schedules, but legislators have been feeling pressured by the State Supreme Court to move up the timeline to meet the court’s mandate that basic education be fully funded by next school year.

North Mason has hired a legal team familiar with working with school districts to help create its salary schedule, but the work may be fast-tracked if legislators decide to move up the timeline in the next regular session, Rosenbach said.

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction had until Dec. 5 to create a report advising districts on the ideal salary schedules, but the report acknowledges that there are no good solutions, Rosenbach said.

With the state’s base allocation of $64,000 per teacher, North Mason will likely choose to pay new teachers well to stay competitive with districts in Kitsap with more state money. But it will run out of dollars to entice those teachers to stay as they get farther along in their careers.

School board member John Campbell noted that the inequity would lead to North Mason becoming a “farm” district where new teachers come and gain experience and training, only to then move onto other districts that will be able to pay more as they become more experienced.

“For those of us in small districts, there is a lot of feeling with this,” he said. “We really need to let our legislators know we do not appreciate being a farm team for other districts and we really want regional justice.”